October 13, 2023

Simple Ways to Conduct Online Market Research

Doing market research on your target audience is key if you want to be able to create and sell products or services well. Plus, it can help you find other areas of growth, such as whether it makes sense to expand a product line or launch a new one altogether. Though small business owners may do market research before launching a product or business, it's also important to continue to tap into your target audience's needs and desires.

The good news is that conducting online market research doesn't have to be complicated. In fact, here are three simple ways you can try.

Dig Into Analytics

There are some inexpensive tools— maybe even including ones offered by your website hosting platform or email service provider — at your disposal. Looking at data such as the amount of clicks to look at a certain product, time spent on your website, and your conversion rate are all useful to get more insights into current users. Consider analytics and research tools that can help you get even more granular so you can use these insights to tap into your business' strengths and opportunities for improvement.

Create Polls and Surveys

Sometimes, to get into the minds of your target audience, you can consider asking them directly. Consider creating a survey for existing and past customers to see what they like and didn't like about their experience with your brand. Or, asking them a question through social media posts will help you reach current customers and those who haven't interacted with your brand yet.

Questions to consider asking through polls and surveys include:

• How they found out about your brand
• What compelled them to make a purchase from your business (if they did)
• What would make their experience better
• Any suggestions of new products, features, or services
  

Creating incentives to provide feedback such as offering discounts on purchases or a gift could also be useful.

What’s more, your target audience may love the opportunity to offer feedback on your company or event test out new features to existing products and services before it gets released onto the market. Plus, it can encourage existing and future customers to be loyal fans of the brand since you're showing them that you really value their opinion.

To start, you can gather a small group of customers or those who frequently interact with your brand as your early testers. How you want to share a new product or service is up to you -- consider ideas such as soliciting early testers through your email list or social media or giving them limited access to your online product and have them reply via an online survey or form on their thoughts.

Getting insights from early testers can also help you find any potential challenges or issues that need to be addressed before you bring the new product or service to market. Advance testing also gives you a chance to see how well your new offering is received by a small population. It could be an opportunity to see where you may need to either tweak the product, service, or marketing strategy to help increase your chances of success.

Research Trends

Looking into the latest consumer trends can help you understand any insights on topics or how your existing product might fare now and into the future. Some ways you can research trends include using tools like Google Trends, or doing an online search for your topic and see what news articles come up— read these to get a sense of what is happening in your industry or consumer behavior in regards to your product or service.

Though you don't directly learn exactly what your current or existing customers are thinking, understanding trends can help you tap into the overall attitudes of your industry and products. These insights can help you either shift or find tactics to ensure your business is relevant long-term.

This content was written by a freelance author and commissioned and paid for by American Express.  This article contains general information and is not intended to provide information that is specific to American Express products and services.